Archaeologists Explored a ‘Blood Cave'—and Found Chopped-Up Maya Skulls
Guatemala's Cueva de Sangre, translated as 'blood cave,' isn't just a clever name. It's an apropos description of the cave former purpose, as a depository of fragments of human remains sacrificed by the Maya people to their rain god.
If that sounds violent, that's because it was.
The cave—and the remains within in it—were first discovered in the 1990s at Dos Pilas in Peten, part of a stretch of roughly 12 caves the Maya people frequented between 400 B.C. and 250 A.D. The 'blood cave,' though, stood out from the other caves discovered for its collection of human bones strewn across the cave floor, with dismemberment and traumatic injuries the norm.
But new research presented at the annual Society for American Archaeology meeting, titled 'Black as Night, Dark as Death,' highlighted the significance of this discovery, beyond the initial brutality on display. 'Human skeletal remains deposited in caves, cenotes, chultuns, and other natural and artificial subterranean chambers provide some of the best contexts to investigate ritual behavior among ancient Mesoamericans,' according to Michele Bleuze, bioarcheologist at California State University, Los Angeles.
Deep within the Guatemalan cave—reached via a small opening with a passageway that drops toward a pool of water—only accessible during the dry season, Bleuze said the injuries enacted upon the more than 100 adult and juvenile human bone fragments show that the remains were part of a ritual to please a Maya rain god. 'The emerging pattern that we're seeing is that there are body parts and not bodies,' Bleuze told Live Science. 'In Maya ritual, body parts are just as valuable as the whole body.'
Getting from traumatic injury to rain god ritual, though, was more than just conjecture. The bones weren't buried and that the injuries occurred around the time of death, leading those studying the remains to determine the the body parts were the results of ritual dismemberment.
'The types of skeletal elements present, trauma, arrangement of bones, and bone modifications, strongly support the sacrificial nature of the deposition,' the researchers wrote.
Ellen Fricano, a forensic anthropologist at Western University of Health Sciences in California, told Live Science that a beveled-edge tool, possibly akin to a hatchet, left a distinguishing mark on the left side of a skull's forehead. A similar mark was found on a child's hip bone.
Even the way the bones were placed within the cave, such as four stacked skull caps in one spot, sparked questions. The experts conclude that the intense injuries, transparent volume of bones, and the inclusion of other ritual items, such as red ochre and obsidian blades, show that the blood cave wasn't a run-of-the-mill burial site.
Researchers plan to do additional DNA testing to learn more about the bones. 'Right now, our focus is who are these people deposited here,' Bleuze said, 'because they're treated completely differently than the majority of the population.'
The fact the cave is inaccessible other than for roughly three months in the spring offers additional reasoning behind the sacrifices. Bleuze believes the Day of the Holy Cross celebration each May 3 brought the ancient people to caves to plead with the Maya rain god for enough rain to supply a bountiful harvest.
'It is not surprising,' Bleuze wrote, 'that bioarcheologists encounter human remains that extend our understanding of the life and death of ancient Mesoamericans beyond what is provided in traditional mortuary contexts.'
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